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From a Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg press release translated by Google Translate (Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg has an English-language Web site, but apparently has not yet translated this press release): Mozart’s notes in the digital age interactive, individual and free for everyone. “With DIME , the Digital Interactive Mozart Edition , a new era in dealing with the musical works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart is breaking. So far, the notes on Mozart’s music were available on the Internet exclusively as pictures of printed editions. The new portal DIME , which was developed by the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg in collaboration with the Packard Humanities Institute in Los Altos, California, for the first time provides digital data that the user can adapt interactively to his needs. This includes a variety of options for selecting works’ excerpts, which can also be synchronized with existing sound recordings or played back as MIDI files.” The DIME site itself does have an English version.

EurekAlert: Open science and data initiative announced for neurofibromatosis . “The Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF), together with the Neurofibromatosis Therapeutic Acceleration Program (NTAP) and Sage Bionetworks (Sage), has announced the first-ever open data portal for scientific research results in the field of neurofibromatosis (NF).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: YouTubers may see a decline in subscriptions as Google tackles spam on the platform . “The YouTube team has announced that it will be removing spam subscriptions from channels on its platform over the next couple of days. The move is part of a regular check-up to make sure that channel subscriptions are not inflated by spam tools. The company says it’s using ‘industry-leading techniques and proprietary technology’ to determine which followers are fake.”

TechCrunch: Google agrees not to sell facial recognition tech, citing abuse potential . “In recent months, pressure has been mounting for major tech firms to develop strong policies regarding facial recognition. Microsoft has helped lead the way on that front, promising to put in place stricter policies, calling for greater regulation and asking fellow companies to follow suit. Hidden toward the end of a blog post about using artificial intelligence to benefit health clinics in Asia, Google SVP Kent Walker affirmed the company’s commitment not to sell facial recognition APIs. The executive cites concerns over how the technology could be abused.”

Make Tech Easier: What is a Facebook Watch Party and How to Set It Up . “Watching videos that interest you is fun, but it’s even better when you can watch them with friends. Facebook knows this, and that’s why it added the Watch Party feature, so friends have another reason to get together. You can finally have a digital someone with you so you can both (or others as well) talk about the same video. There is no need to install an extra app to use it, as it’s sitting right there in your Facebook app.”

CNET: Check out these iOS AR apps. “If your iPhone or iPad is on iOS 11 or 12, you’ve gotta try an augmented reality app on it. AR apps enhance the real world with 3D graphics, measuring tools, games, learning and more. But which apps should you try? We’ve spent hours combing through the App Store for our favorite AR titles and here are the ones that we think will wow you.” I like the list of AR apps CNET came up with, which is why I’m linking to this article even though it’s a slideshow.

MakeUseOf: 5 Instagram Apps You Didn’t Know You Needed. “Whether it’s checking out someone’s profile picture in full size or using Instagram without having an account, these third-party apps and tools level up your Instagram game. Most of these apps fill a need that Instagram has ignored to address or could be upcoming features, like the ability to create custom stickers, or planning your feed so you know how your profile will look.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Fast Company: The frantic, unprecedented race to save 700,000 NSFW Tumblrs for posterity. “GeoCities, Vine, Friendster–communities live, thrive, and often die on the net. But the two-week timeframe in which content will disappear from Tumblr is unprecedented, says Jason Scott. He cofounded Archive Team, a volunteer project running software that scarfs copies of endangered websites for posterity. They are now scrambling to preserve an estimated 700,000 Tumblr blogs that are expected to partly or entirely disappear due to a new, broadly defined ban on ‘adult content announced on December 3.”

Wired: How WhatsApp Fuels Fake News and Violence in India. “The five male victims in Rainpada were part of a string of killings that took place over the late spring and summer linked to messages spread on WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned encrypted messaging platform. Police and government officials estimate that more than two dozen people have been killed by mobs, though no official tally is being kept. IndiaSpend, a data journalism outlet, pegs the figure at 33 killed in 69 incidents of mob violence between January 2017 and July 2018.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Threat Post: WordPress 5.0 Patched to Fix Serious Bugs. “WordPress 5.0 users are being urged to update their CMS software to fix a number of serious bugs. The update (WordPress 5.0.1) addresses seven flaws and was issued Thursday, less than a week after WordPress 5.0 was released.”

Engadget: Hiding in plain sight: The YouTubers’ crowdfunding piracy. “I never imagined I would be watching Kitchen Nightmares, starring the world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay, in my downtime on YouTube. I knew of Ramsay and his ruthlessness from shows like Hell’s Kitchen, but I had never heard of Kitchen Nightmares until a few weeks ago, when an episode popped up on YouTube’s Trending section. Next thing you know, I’m hooked and watching full episodes of it on my phone instead of the usual sneaker videos. But aside from Ramsay’s rants at owners of filthy restaurants, something else caught my attention — these uploads weren’t from Fox, which owns the rights to the show in the US. Instead, they were from an unofficial channel called ‘Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell’s Kitchen.’ And as if that wasn’t brazen enough, the owner explicitly asked viewers for donations to fund the uploading of copyrighted content.” Good morning, Internet…

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